Venus stations retrograde in Scorpio

Venus stations retrograde in Scorpio today. Seen from Earth she slows, appears to stand still against the stars, and begins to move backward through the sign.

Start with what Venus carries. Sepharial writes that she confers good taste, fine feeling, artistic powers, gentleness and love of pleasure, and that she renders affairs pleasant and prosperous. Next to Jupiter, he counts her the most benefic of the planets. Ptolemy, describing Venus well placed, lists among her gifts a mind that is affectionate, compassionate, refined in taste and easily reconciled. She is the planet that makes things go smoothly between people and makes ordinary life agreeable.

Now the motion. Ptolemy's rule is that a planet's influence is strongest when it is swift and direct in its proper course, because it then has its greatest power. It loses strength when slow in motion or retrograde, and then acts "with smaller effect". The reason lies in the motion itself. A planet running its normal course works at full stride; one that has slowed to a halt and reversed does not. At a station a planet is as slow as it ever gets, and from today Venus is also retrograde. On Ptolemy's reckoning, both weakening conditions apply to her at once.

He does not treat the station as simply feeble, though. In his chapter on the body in a birth chart, Ptolemy separates a planet's first station, the turn backward Venus makes today, from its second, and reckons the first the more vigorous. The turning point carries weight even as the planet's forward effect thins.

The sign adds its own note. In Sepharial's scheme Scorpio is a sign of Mars, standing opposite Taurus, one of Venus's own signs. He reads Mars and Venus as a pair set against each other, the number of the one opposed to the number of the other in whatever direction one looks. Venus is working in her counterpart's territory.

The practice follows from the rule. If Venus's easing acts with smaller effect while she moves backward, then the tact, pleasantness and ready reconciliation she usually lends to dealings between people are less likely to arrive by themselves. So where a strained exchange would normally be left to soften on its own, supply the softening deliberately. Say the kind thing plainly, make the gesture of repair rather than waiting for it, and bring conscious care to whatever is being made instead of assuming the grace will come unasked. This holds for as long as Venus stays retrograde, and it eases when she turns direct.